Currently, business-to-business electronic marketplaces exist that are accessible to businesses through computer networks, such as the Internet. These electronic marketplaces permit members of the marketplaces to purchase and sell products to other members of the marketplace without needing to actually talk to the other member. Such marketplaces are computer systems that are generally maintained by either the members themselves, a third party, or a company for internal use between business units. These systems greatly increase the efficiency with which members can purchase and sell goods.
Because it is desirable that transactions conducted over such marketplaces are legally enforceable contracts, the use of electronic signatures is important. An electronic signature demonstrates that the document actually comes from the party it purports to be from, that the document has not been tampered with or altered, that the sender meant to send the document and that the signer accepts the terms therein. However, numerous different signing authorities currently exist, such as Verisign, Identrust, and others, and many more may arise in the future. In order to provide members of the marketplace with the ability to do business with companies of their choice that might be using any of the existing or future signing authorities, the electronic marketplace must be readily adaptable to handle those authorities.
As can be seen in FIG. 1 (Prior Art), under the prior art, a member 10 would be connected into an electronic marketplace 20 through a computer link or network, such as the Internet 15. When member 10 desires to undertake an action which would require an electronic signature, for instance, authorize a payment, a service application 30 residing on the electronic marketplace 20 will call a signing service application 40, 41 or 42, depending upon which signing authority is utilized by the appropriate outside service 50, 51 or 52, which may be, for instance, a bank. Under the prior art, a custom-made interface program 35, 36, 37 or 38 is created to handle the interface with each outside service 50, 51 and 52. These custom-made interface programs 35, 36, 37 and 38 access the appropriate signing service 40, 41 or 42 that the respective outside service 50, 51 or 52 uses. These programs 35, 36, 37 and 38 must also take into account the data elements within a document that the respective outside service 50, 51, or 52 requires be signed. Even if outside services 50 and 51 were to use the same signing service 40, separate custom-made interface programs 35 and 36 would be required if the data elements that outside services 50 and 51 required to be signed were different. With the large number of different outside service providers that marketplace members may want to utilize, each having their own requirements on what data within documents needs to be signed and what security application needs to be used, the situation gets extremely complicated. Each time a member desires to access a new outside service, another custom-made interface program needs to be created, causing delay and additional expense.
Another prior art system is shown in FIG. 2 (Prior Art). This system utilizes a conversion device 12 to convert or map a document type from the internal format utilized in a member's internal computer system 11 into a format accepted by electronic marketplace 20. The document then travels through a firewall 13 onto Internet 15 before reaching the electronic marketplace 20. A problem exists when a document that is resident on electronic marketplace 20 needs to be signed by member 10. Because the document resident on electronic marketplace does need to be mapped, a signature that is attached prior to conversion device 12 will not be able to be validated due to changes in the data due to the mapping. In order to address this problem, some prior art systems removed member 10 from the signing process. In such systems, the signature was attached automatically by the electronic marketplace 20 itself. This does not provide the recipient of the signed document with the knowledge that the sender truly desired to send the document and agreed to be bound by its terms and thus may cause problems with enforceability of the signed document.